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Pumpkins, PSoC & Ghost Detectors! It's Halloween at Cypress

October 31, 2017

By Shannon Stroud

There’s a spooky feeling in the air at our Langen, Germany office today as our Problem Solvers invited their loved ones to celebrate Halloween! It’s a tradition for Cypress employees to bring their kids to the office to learn more about their parents’ work and the people they spend their days with. In recent years, our Germany office has celebrated this tradition on Halloween, making it into a full day of fun activities, maker projects and sweet treats. Not only did our future Problem Solvers enjoy themselves, but it was also fun to have them running around the Cypress office throughout the day.

In the morning, the team met for a festive breakfast, where parents and kids cooked pumpkin Halloween waffles for everyone to enjoy before the day started. After breakfast, the party was split in two groups so that the children could enjoy fun, age-appropriate activities.

The youngest group oversaw the creation of the office’s Halloween decorations. These little ones decorated ornaments and candles with trees, ghosts and leaves to spook-ify the work environment. Pictured here is one of the decorations made by Cypress kids!

While decorations were being created, children over the age of nine joined our engineers for an “Intro to Soldering” course. Part of the class worked on a Velleman Halloween Pumpkin project, while the others worked on a PSoC® 4 ghost detector. The Velleman group learned how to solder 25 LED lights onto a pumpkin shaped board. When lit up, the lights flicker a bright yellow just like a jack-o’-lantern.

The second group of older children worked on a project that inconspicuously detected the office ghosts. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Cypress party without a little PSoC magic! Using our CY8CKIT-142 kits, the group created a ghost detector that had a motion detector, proximity sensor, lamp drivers, SD card slot and audio amplifier. Once the board was complete, they attached the board on to a Halloween pumpkin and waited for it to go off alerting them of any unwelcomed spooky guests.

The homemade printed circuit board (PCB) ghost detector used pre-programed PSoC 4 kits and through-hole technology (THT) that made it easy for the kids to solder together. Finished products were placed into pumpkins and the group headed off to lunch. The best part about our PSoC pumpkin ghost detector is that it’s an easy project for young Problem Solvers to work on and can be used for various types of projects throughout the year. During Halloween, our homemade PCB is a ghost detector, during the holiday season it can help track Santa, and near Saint Patrick’s Day it will help find those sneaky leprechauns.

A big thank you to Doreen Behrends, Nicole Taenzler, Martin Oberkönig, and Holger Wech for putting together a successful and fun event for all our friends and family in Langen!